What's wrong with this picture?

Matthew Yglesias has a post up about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a congresswoman from south Florida who is supposed to be working to turn Republican seats Democratic, but refuses to participate in targeting of three vulnerable Cuban-American members of Congress also from South Florida because they are buddies. Despite the meat of that post, I can only focus on the picture Yglesias chose to accompany it.

Now, in full disclosure, I knew Debbie Wasserman-Schultz when I worked for a lobbyist in the Fla. legislature back in 1996 when she was a lowly state Representative. She was somewhat of a caricature even then, with let's just say a unique personal style and a tendency towards behavior that got her noticed for perhaps the wrong reasons. But in the last 12 years she got herself elected to Congress and has been an effective representative for her district. And while it is certainly fair game to question the political judgment behind refusing to help take vulnerable seats because you like the Republicans who hold them (and maybe because you don't want to piss off the Cuban vote in FL in the event you ever intend to seek statewide office there), I still have a weird feeling about this picture.

Maybe it's just that I personally reacted reflexively and negatively to the awful blue eyeliner. I am a girl who knows her makeup, and who has strong opinions about the times when brightly colored eyeliner is appropriate. (Answer: pretty much never.) Maybe it's that I remember the Katherine Harris/Cruella DeVille comparisons and feel a little guilty for participating in them. Or maybe it's that we've finally seen a national campaign with a female candidate in which her appearance has been inordinately focused on as compared to her male rivals. But something about that photo rubs me the wrong way. I can't decide if I'm bothered at my own reaction, that Yglesias used that photo when Wasserman-Schultz has a more recent official photo, or perhaps I'm bothered that a Congresswoman would ever choose to wear bright blue eyeliner in her official photo (which that was, according to Wikipedia.) I honestly don't know.

Wasserman-Schultz's current official photo is this must more tasteful and reasonably-made up one:



Why didn't Yglesias use that one? Sure, the one he used came up first on Google image search and was on her wikipedia page. But her official photo came up second, and would be on her house page. It was an editorial decision, and maybe it was just to make Debbie look a little kooky. But maybe there was a subtle intention there to cause readers not to take her as seriously. Even if she did have bad choice in eyeliner, that's not enough of a reason to write off someone's judgment entirely without giving them the benefit of the doubt or the respect a Congresswoman should be afforded.

My thoughts on this topic are ever-evolving, so I may edit. I may decide I don't care. I may decide it's my personal quirk. I dunno. But let me know if you think I'm off base.